A/N: In this story, Kate is alive. Essentially, it's pre-Twilight, since I accept the changes that have been made in the show… so far. Time will tell how I feel about the new characters. Many thanks to Rinne, for fixing the punctuation and giving me suggestions when the action wasn't clear. Okay, I got bored, so I decided to post another chapter right away. We're almost to the end, kiddies, hang on to your hats!
Chapter 6
Corporal Gina Livingston was a small woman, slightly overweight, with mousy brown hair. She sat in the interrogation room, nervously picking at her cuticles. They had left her in there for a few hours, to shake her up, although it looked like it wouldn't take much to do that. It was now early evening; Paula Cassidy waited a few more minutes before entering the room. Putting a pile of folders on the table, she opened one and started reading.
After a few minutes, Gina timidly spoke, "Why am I here?"
Paula looked up as if surprised the other woman was in the room with here, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
Gina cleared her throat nervously and repeated her question, "Why am I here?"
Paula sat back in her chair and smiled at the nervous woman. "You have no idea?"
"No, I…" stammered Gina. "I really don't."
"Well," leaning forward again, Paula looked through the papers in the folder, "you're being charged with the attempted murder of Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo."
Gina's already sallow complexion paled. "No," she whispered.
Turning around, Paula picked up a remote and pressed 'play'. "Isn't that you going into Agent DiNozzo's room?"
"Yes," the suspect's voice was barely audible.
"And here you are coming out." Paula let the tape play. "And now the other nurses are rushing in because Agent DiNozzo is starting to go into cardiac arrest."
"Somebody put a lethal amount of potassium in Agent DiNozzo's IV, Corporal Livingston, and yours were the only prints on the IV tubing."
Gina started shaking her head slowly, murmuring 'no' repeatedly under her breath.
"You're right there on the tape, Gina. No one else went into the room between the time Agent DiNozzo received his medication and the time his heart started failing." Paula's voice was hard.
"No… no… no…"
Slamming her hands on the table, Paula stood and leaned in toward the shaking woman. "Who paid you to kill a Federal Agent, Gina?" she yelled. "Who paid you to ignore your oath to help people and got you to inject a comatose man with a lethal dose of potassium?"
Corporal Livingston began rocking and crying. "No one paid me. No one."
"No one?" Paula cocked her head, inquiringly. "What? You just decided to put Agent DiNozzo out of his misery? Is that it? You thought he would never wake up so you decided to help him die?"
"NO," cried Gina, tearfully. "It wasn't like that!"
"What was it like, Gina? Why did you do it?"
"I had to do it, he made me do it." The woman was sobbing hysterically now. "He would have killed me, I know it, he's evil!"
"Who?" Paula leaned closer. "Who made you do it?"
Gina continued rocking and crying, shaking her head. "I can't tell you. He'll kill me, he's killed before."
Sitting down, Paula lowered her voice and tried to soothe the terrified woman. "We can protect you, Gina. We can get the killer and put him so far away you'll never have to be afraid again." As Gina continued to shake her head, Paula reached out and touched her arm gently. "Tell me who it is, and I promise, I'll keep you safe."
Gina looked up tearfully. "I didn't want to hurt Agent DiNozzo, I swear. I was so afraid, and I thought if I did this, then he wouldn't kill me and Agent DiNozzo would die peacefully. He wants him dead, he was so mad that he didn't die at the scene. He wouldn't have left him if he knew he would survive."
"Who, Gina? Why did he frame Agent Gibbs and try to kill Agent DiNozzo?"
"He wanted Gibbs to stop digging into the murder. He was afraid Gibbs would find out what really happened."
"What really happened, Gina?" Paula asked softly.
The nurse seemed to have given up. She spoke softly, but the observers in the other room were able to hear what she was saying.
"My brother went to Roger Murphy's gym all the time. The two of them got to be friends, and after awhile, they started to get real close. They had to keep it secret, though, so Roger started to fool around with some woman at the gym, so people would think he was having an affair."
"Your brother and Roger Murphy were having an affair?" Paula tried to keep the surprise out of her voice.
Gina nodded. "Roger's wife found out about it and confronted the two of them when they thought she was out of town. Junior strangled her; he's got a real short temper. Then he and Roger got rid of all the evidence."
She took a deep breath. "But Special Agent Gibbs wouldn't accept the jury's verdict, and kept digging. So Junior snuck into his basement and put something in a bottle of bourbon to knock Gibbs out. He waited until Gibbs came home and was in the basement for awhile, then he went in and carried him out and took him over to Roger's house."
Gina sobbed. "He killed Roger, he beat and stabbed him to death. Then he roughed up Gibbs' hands and face and put some of Roger's blood on his hands. I guess Agent DiNozzo was following, or suspected something, because he came in and he and Junior started fighting. Junior beat him unconscious then stabbed him. He put the knife in Gibbs' hand to get his prints on it, and put some of Agent DiNozzo's blood on Gibbs' hands too."
Paula looked skeptical. "How do you know all this, were you there?"
Gina shook her head. "Junior told me what happened, when he told me to put the potassium in the IV."
Still not quite believing the story, Paula continued, "There were no unidentifiable prints at either crime scene, Gina."
Gina nodded. "Junior's a cop. He knows what to cover up."
"Your brother's a cop? What's his name?"
"Edward Robbins, he's with the Sheriff's department. We've called him Junior since we were kids."
Kate looked at McGee in shock. "Oh my god."